1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and a standard for application packaging and integration, and, more particularly, to application resource integration and deployment into a cloud.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems present some challenges with regard to delivering and installing new applications. Software as Service (SaaS) web applications are integrated into systems by a vendor using special delivery and installation packages. However, if the vendor needs to integrate/deploy his application into a cloud, he would have to repeat all integration operations for each host or hosting platform several times. The hosts and the hosting platforms have applications that control the host or the hosting platforms. These applications make it very difficult and expensive to integrate external (third party) applications or web services. However, for the vendor to himself develop host-specific applications is even more expensive.
Currently, integration of applications into hosts and hosting platforms is implemented using two classes of applications—a Control Panel and a Service Controller. In case of a cloud, these programs are inefficient and have to be used several times by a vendor in order to integrate a single application into the cloud.
The clouds (or cloud servers) is a software-hardware combination of a host provider, which provides for functionality of external applications in its client's accounts.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an efficient and inexpensive method for integration of applications into the clouds.